MCCORMICK SHUTDOWN PUT OFF

John McCarron and Daniel Egler. Tim Franklin contributed to this storyCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The McCormick Place board voted Monday to delay shutting down the exhibition center`s expansion project for one more week in the hope that the stalemated legislature will come up with a $60 million bailout. But board members said they now have ''stretched the rubber band as far as it will go.'' Meanwhile, legislative leaders and the governor remained stuck in the quagmire that has kept lawmakers in session well beyond their scheduled adjournment last Thursday and bottled up several key issues.

Mayor Harold Washington rejected a compromise proposed by Gov. James Thompson on Friday because, his aides said, it could have vested too much authority in a board ''trustee'' to be appointed by the governor for a new McCormick Place board. A Washington aide said the trustee also should be appointed by the new board, not Thompson.

Thompson accused Washington of attempting a power grab. ''He doesn`t have it now, and he wants it,'' Thompson told reporters after an early evening meeting with legislative leaders. ''It`s very simple, pure politics.''

Despite two prolonged meetings among legislative leaders and the governor, the logjam showed no signs of breaking.

''I hope you all brought extra shirts, because we may be here for a while,'' Senate Minority Leader James ''Pate'' Philip (R., Wood Dale) advised his members Monday night.

The McCormick Place bailout has become tied to legislation that would give tax breaks for the rebuilding of the fire-gutted Arlington Park racetrack. Also, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago) and Washington are demanding that a new McCormick Place board be split at least evenly between state and city control.

Philip and other Republicans, who have argued for state control of the Metropolitan Fair and Exposition Authority, which governs McCormick Place, have refused to go along with any bailout until Madigan yields in his opposition to aid for the suburban Arlington Park track.

Madigan and Philip refused to bend Monday.

''We are firm in our position,'' Philip said after a meeting with his caucus.

Madigan, who brought four spare shirts with him to the capital Monday, said, ''I`m not anxious to leave.''

Legislative leaders said they would meet again Tuesday morning. Thompson said he had given up hope of joining an Illinois trade delegation in the Far East and would reschedule the trip for January.

With McCormick Place negotiations stalled, legislation that would open Illinois to regional interstate banking, raise the state cigarette tax and provide relief for farmers remained in limbo.

But Thompson said those issues probably could be resolved once the McCormick Place issue is settled.

James Sheerin, chairman of the McCormick Place board, said at a board meeting Monday that holding out one more week is the ''prudent, fiscally responsive way to go.

''But we`re at the bottom of the barrel now,'' Sheerin said after the board approved nearly $3 million in payments to contractors, leaving only $4.5 million unobligated from its original bond issue of $252 million.

The board has $70 million in unspent funds, but nearly all of that has been obligated to the 31 prime contractors on the job.

F.R. ''Rick'' Duran, the board`s assistant general manager for the project, said the $70 million would be enough to ''buy out'' the 31 contractors if the project has to be shut down for the winter.

If the project were shutdown, the cost of rebidding, restarting and finishing the project would be considerable if the legislature provided the funds in the future.

Another top executive on the project said his review of contract documents shows that any shutdown long enough to force the discharge of contractors would boost the eventual cost of finishing the exposition hall`s expansion by $53 million to $87 million.